Seed collection guidelines

Armstrongs mountain daisy seedhead. Photo: Jesse Bythell

These guidelines are for use once you have registered as a collector. Please register before collecting seed.

  • Remember you are collecting from threatened species - use a sampling strategy that will allow every plant to naturally disseminate most of its seeds into the wild.
  • In general collect less than 20% of the seeds from any plant. For populations of 10 or less individuals collected less than 5% of the seeds from any plant. The only exception to this is if the population is going to be destroyed.
  • Where possible, collect mature seeds and keep them cool and dry.
  • Collect seeds into paper bags or envelopes (not plastic).
  • If seed is slightly immature, and you will not be able to return to the site at a better time, it is sometimes possible to obtain good seed by removing a whole or part of an inflorescence with the stalk attached and allowing it to dry slowly in a paper bag.
  • If there are less than 10 individuals, keep seeds from each plant separate.
  • For larger populations, bulk the seed in one bag or envelope and record approximately how many plants were sampled.
  • Collect from as many individuals as possible trying to sample at least 40-50, spread evenly across the population. This is to maximise the genetic diversity in the collection.
  • Ideally a collection would be around 1,000 viable seeds. Most collections in the MWH Seed Bank for New Zealand's Threatened Plants are likely to be much less than this.
  • Record the size of the area sampled for each bag (e.g. 5m x 7m).
  • If there are several different areas, ecological niches, or separate populations at each main site, keep them separate.
  • Collect a herbarium voucher specimen - this is important to ensure that the species has been accurately identified. If there is too little material available to collect a voucher specimen take a photo instead.
  • Document information about species and site as fully as possible as it is important that data is collected to accompany your seed collection.
  • Please use the data collection form (PDF file size 75K).

For more information follow these links:

This page last updated on 26 Nov 2012